Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Video and tweets of a rapeapologist-misogynist-atheist

I have heard his name before. He is thunderf00t. Two zeros in his foot. A strange name though. I did not get time to listen to his arguments when he was fighting against PZ Myers and other Free Thought Boggers. I thought thunder had some kind of intellectual rivalry with FTBloggers but he was not that bad. But I probably was wrong. When Al posted thunderfoo– oops 00t’s new video about a week ago, I watched the video right away and I was shocked. I was really really shocked watching his video on rape. He blamed women for rape. He advised women to take precautions to avoid rape. He didn’t want to ask men to stop rape. I felt I was listening to a Muslim fanatic, not an atheist or a humanist. Does thunder want women to wear burqas, in order to protect themselves from being raped? It seems so. He also wants women not to get drunk, because that may bring rapes. Women have to give up their freedom if they want to be saved from their fellow humans! Wow! Now I realize why PZ dislikes him.

We teach people not to murder, not to rob. It works. It reduces murder and robbery rates. If we teach men not to rape, it would work too. But the problem is people like thunderf00t want to teach women how not to get raped, but do not want to teach men how not to rape. Whatever precautions women take, men will continue raping women if they are not taught to get rid of patriarchal misogyny.

I wrote, ‘thunderf00t is a rape apologist’. That made thunder crazy. He started abusing me and others whoever opposed him. He retweeted all the misogynistic tweets he received from his likeminded buddies. He called everyone whoever disagreed with him ‘rape apologist’. He has been crazy for days. I don’t know whether he gets well now.

I expect atheists to have good qualities because they I believe are the most intelligent and sane people on earth. I expect them to be nice, kind and honest. I expect them to believe in equality and justice. But when I see some of the atheists are misogynists, rapists, rape apologists, animal haters, murderers, war mongers, hypocrites, liars, exploiters, I feel sad. I really really feel very sad.

Comments

The sad thing is that Phil Mason (aka Thunder-zeroes-guy) was once a leading vid-maker opposing creationist foolishness. Most of us were happy to let slide his occasional pomposity and dodgy grammar because his arguments were sound and his videos entertaining.

Then, just after joining FtB, he pointed his intellect at what he considered the non-problem of harrassment at conferences and took the view that harrassment policies were not only unnecessary but were also invasive and autocratic and prevented normal human interactions. His intellect seemed a little blunter when applied to this topic and in no time at all his posts here devolved into nothing more than poorly-written tirades directed at PZ Myers, filled with point-missing, strawman arguments and seemingly deliberate miscontruals of what feminism and misogyny actually are.

And now, after many a video displaying his rank ignorance on this and related topics, he’s come to this spectacularly low point – as you say, his words resemble that of a fundamentalist imam and not a rational, progressive atheist.

I just hope any organisation that is considering him speaking at their event does so with a decent overview of the man and his opinions.

Till today , i have not seen any man telling other men to Respect the Women and behave like Man at least, if not not like gentleman . Those who give such foolish statement, let it be anybody, just to came in lime lite only.

Mr.Bushan, I’m trying to understand why you’re thanking Taslima. Did you watch the video by thunderf00t, the one she’s commenting on or are you just reacting to the sentiment she’s conveying here through her totally erroneous judgement?

I’m actually willing to take a shot at the ‘is teaching crime prevention make one a crime apologists?’ Depending on the crime and the nature of the advice, it might. Telling people “avoid bad neighborhoods” is kind of a waste, as if you live in one, you can’t avoid it, and probably can’t afford to leave, and making it *your job* to avoid bad neighborhoods either excuses the police from keeping them safe or the government from providing the means for bad neighborhoods to improve. When I hear cops say “avoid bad neighborhoods” I’m hearing them relinquish all responsibility for public safety.

Or ‘learn self-defense.’ Great if you are young and able-bodied, but some people aren’t going to be able to defend themselves, even if armed. Does a gun do a blind person any good?

Let’s assume the cops really are relinquishing their responsibilities, would that make thunderf00t’s advice invalid? I know of people who come from bad neighborhoods and they all live with the constant awareness that things could go wrong if they don’t take precautions. Speak to anyone from South Africa, they’ll have some tips for you

People already do take precautions; advising people to do so, particularly when you do not face the same risks they do and are more privileged, is obnoxious and patronizing.

If people in bad neighborhoods take precautions because the police are not doing their jobs, then the people in bad neighborhoods taking precautions will still be in more danger than the people in better neighborhoods who do no such thing, and I find that unacceptable – it’s deciding that some people should live in ghettos. I have lived in some rather bad neighborhoods – the only interest cops had in them was finding random non-white people to harass.

“Don’t get raped” has been the advice for all of my lifetime, if not for most of recorded history. People still get raped. It’s not enough to expect people to “take personal responsibility for their own safety for a change” because that change has already been in effect for decades at least. You could almost say it’s not much of a change, actually.
Most of the programs which aim to teach people not to rape do so by educating people about consent, because the inhuman monster hiding in the bushes to rape you as you walk past is not the majority of rapists – the majority of rapists are people who simply don’t understand the importance of consent. Clearly some simply don’t care, otherwise the outcry from the MRA community would be limited to those who are simply incapable of understanding, rather than including people who refuse to understand, but those who simply don’t understand are the main target.

It isn’t that thunderf00t’s advice is invalid, it’s just that it’s already fully in effect and it’s actually about time that the rapists took some personal responsibility for their own actions for a change. It takes two to tango, after all – just because ze didn’t protect zirself “well enough” doesn’t make the rapist any less of a rapist.

I expect atheists to have good qualities because they I believe are the most intelligent and sane people on earth. I expect them to be nice, and kind and honest. I expect them to believe in equality and justice.

After everything that has happened in the 2+ years since the comment in my gravatar was uttered, I would turn that on its head. If all I know about a person is that xe is an atheist, I expect less than I otherwise would. Now, whenever I encounter a new person on twitter, if xir twitter-handle has something to do with “atheist”, or “skeptic”, or “rational” etc. that’s a major red flag of assholism. There are some very honorable exceptions, but as a rule of fhumb any atheist is now in the “suspect” category until they have explicitly distanced themselves from scum who have been harassing feminists (or bending over backwards to appease those who do) for the last few years.

People come in all shades. There are atheist assholes. You wrote about Bill Maher’s Islamaphobia. As an agnostic, I have come across religious people who are staunch believers in social justice and are peace advocates. The other day I came across a tweet turning your argument on its head – that the fundamentalists who cause death and destruction are actually atheists! That is the danger of stereotyping. Personally, I just see people as good or bad based on their actions, not based on whether they are believers or not.

I thought feminism was about empowering women. You do not empower women by telling men to treat them better; men will treat women how their mothers raised them. You empower women by telling women how to take power / control for themselves. Power is never given. You take it for yourself.

“Men need to treat women better.”

Everyone needs to treat themselves better. I do this thing where I treat myself right and then I’m not reliant on others to treat me.

If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand power. Empowering women = educating them to ignore their mothers’ lies about what they deserve or what they’re entitled to if they disrespect themselves enough to deny themselves. You cannot have power if you are dependent.

The good thing is, whatever the problem is, you found a woman to blame it one.
He’s just like mummy raised him! Poor little lad, never ever had a thought of his own at 43.
He has also never ever spoken to his dad and apprently never watched TV or read a newspaper, let’s not forget this newly-fangled internet thingy, because whatever he knows about the world, about men and women, mummy told him.

The point of saying that men should treat women better is that equality would be treating women better than they are currently treated. But you won’t understand that, because your view seems to be that all women are Mean Girls-style teenagers. Even if it were true, do you really think it’s women in charge of news companies, advertisers, all that, saying what women should be like, what they should look like, and so on? Do you really think the obsession with purity and sexuality of women comes from the women themselves, ultimately?

If you do, then I invite you to pick up a history book and read. Any one ought to do as long as we’re not talking people like Barton or O’Reilly. They would be the first to support your views, but I mean actual scholarship and thought.

Let’s face it, at some point you’re going to have to accept some responsibility for not controlling your own urges. If you’re really so big on making men out to be better, then why do you say it should be ok for them to act more like base animals than women do?

You do not empower women by telling men to treat them better; men will treat women how their mothers raised them.

Since the people holding up the “teach men not to rape” as far as I get it, are often women, and even the mothers are women, how is this not empowering?

Rapists are the problem and women are the most adversely harmed by this. Women educating us men about how our behaviour can be harmful seems pretty empowering to me.. the woman as the teacher, the driver behind social change. Yup sounds fine to me.

You cannot have power if you are dependent.
That’s not how power works.

It is sometimes necessary for those in power to relinquish it, to hand it over.

Statistically there are more women employed as teachers than males, a simple Google search can give you that result.

If we have to believe these biased feminist arguments that we should just “teach MEN not to rape” (great emphasis on men here as there are women rapist, even happened last month ) ,which apparently means all those female teachers are not doing very well as rape still exists, to the opposite of doing both teaching AND reducing the risk factor as Thunderf00t said, we reduce the chances of women becoming a rape victim. ThunderF00t does not disregard the idea of teaching kids not to rape but simply that you can’t believe in the delusion that everyone will follow those rules and are thereby better off taking extra precautions to reduce the chances even further.

As Thundef00t said in his video at 0:52, the straw man argument is the idea that we do not teach children that rape is bad while we do, done by mostly female teachers.

And at 3:46 he clearly states that it is stupid to believe that just because something is against the war you shouldn’t take precautions just because something against the law.
We teach children not to steal, yet we still have a high annual amount of burglaries every year.
Teaching will decrease the chances but prevention contributes to the equation as well.

At 7:55 he even says that while it is true that rape is not your fault, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in you power to avoid giving of the wrong signal to potential rapists, Murphy’s law is still in effect however so the chance of rape will exist, it is just a lot less likely.
It can be compared to driving, you should always take the precaution of wearing a seat belt just to be sure, because not everyone will respect the right of way or the speed limit.

Did you check my link to the success of an anti-rape campaign from Canada? We have empirical evidence that teaching men not to rape by removing the excuses *can work.*

“he even says that while it is true that rape is not your fault, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in you power to avoid giving of the wrong signal to potential rapists, ”

Rapists rationalize their actions – if you *look* at some rapists, they take it as a ‘yes to sex’ so there’s no ‘wrong signals’ you can give. Unless you think that saying ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ is a mixed signal. No matter how drunk someone gets, whether they talk to you, go back to your place, NONE Of those things imply consent to sex. If a man interprets it as such, he’s reading what he wants into it.

First of all the sources are of private news companies, linking to other private news companies.
Not a single source was to a governmental site or official source, as far as I know they could have just pulled some number out of a tall hat and called it a day.
Don’t be gullible and don’t trust a site the minute you see it, .gov are the most trust able but even then don’t take a single word true until evidence is presented.

However the female sexdrive increases while under the effects of alcohol( as can be found on this site .

In any way I am against rape and getting drunk, you can drink alcohol but do know your limits.
However what most of these campaigns are saying is “Get drunk and pass out that is cool but just don’t rape” portraying being drunk as a sensible and normal action while the campaign could have easily said :
“Don’t get drunk and don’t rape”.
Just because one is worse that doesn’t mean it cancels out the other, two wrongs don’t make a right etc etc etc

Do note that with the above I do not imply we shouldn’t do campaigns against rape.
I just imply that we shouldn’t perceive it as being so easy to the point that only through educating people that they shouldn’t do something we actually solve the problem.
Even the article is behind that, with only a 10 percent decrease, we know it decreases the chances but the problem still exists.

To put it again with the burglar analogy.
If there is a 10 percent decrease in burglaries, that is then in now way an indication that you should keep your doors unlocked, you keep that precaution because you know there are still burglars out there.

We should do our best to keep the amount of people becoming rapists to a minimum if not to zero however we should, just to be on the safe site, educate people on how to minimize the chances of getting raped, one of which is a problem on it’s own that shouldn’t occur at all either (getting drunk).

I do research myself, and the notion that ‘.gov is always the most trustworthy’ seems to imply not really looking into methodologies but just accepting certain sources more easily than others.

On the alcohol issue, one study you linked me to only really explores the issue of alcohol on adolescent sexual behavior in terms of the first time of sex, which hardly generalizes to the issue at hand. The other link just links to that article.

The abstract for “Women, Alcohol and Sexuality” says “There also is a relationship between overall alcohol consumption and risky sexual behavior for women, but when alcohol use at or preceding individual instances of sexual activity is examined, there is no association in the majority of studies. ”

that seems to imply that it’s not a factor in getting women to have more sex than normal; I can’t get to the article owing to the page not being up, but that’s 2/3 of the things you cited which actually don’t address the issue.

I’d say passing out drunk is probably not good, but even *SUGGESTING* that you should not get drunk to avoid getting raped sends the message to rapists that women who are drunk and passed out are asking for it.

Graduated IT and as far as I know, only governmental institutions are allowed to use .gov extensions making them easily more reliable than any other site.

“I’d say passing out drunk is probably not good, but even *SUGGESTING* that you should not get drunk to avoid getting raped sends the message to rapists that women who are drunk and passed out are asking for it.”

Suggesting to not check if your door is locked must mean you are inviting thieves in then.
You are seriously saying that taken a precaution means you invite the criminals to commit the crime if otherwise.
Door locked or not stealing is still bad and leaving your door open is not an invitation to thieves, it will just make it more likely for you to get robbed by someone who doesn’t care about the rules we tried to implement in him so desperately as a child.
Same goes for a rapists, you are better of not getting drunk so you are not in a position where you’re an easy target for rapists.
You are doing exactly what Thunderfoot addresses, not taking responsibility in minimizing your risks of being raped, in fact if you are drunk, you are increasing them. You are not responsible for rape but you are responsible of increasing the chances of it happening.

In the door analogy, being drunk is leaving the door open.
You do not have the intend to let anyone in but you are increasing the risk of making it more likely to be targeted by the criminal. You simply tell a child to shut the door, or in this case not get drunk.

Though more teachers are women, there’s no reason to assume that teachers who are women are teaching anything about rape. Why do you link the idea that more teachers are women to the idea that boys are already being taught not to rape?

We teach children not to steal, yet we still have a high annual amount of burglaries every year.

If you teach children not to steal, but do not teach them that there is more to stealing that snatching an item out of a person’s hand, what have you taught them?
Yes, we teach people not to rape. That much, apparently, is fine. Teaching people that there’s more to rape than hiding in the bushes and pouncing on the first person that walks by, however, is facing some opposition… that’s you guys, in case you were wondering, the ones who think it’s enough to say don’t rape, and then put all the responsibility for avoiding rape on rape victims – which is where all the responsibility is already resting anyway.
Teach people what rape is, and, so long as you’ve taught them not to rape in the first place, you’re teaching them not to rape. Yes, you will still have rapists, but you will have far fewer of them, which means fewer rapes, and far less implicit support for rapists. (That’s a good thing.)

” that’s you guys, in case you were wondering, the ones who think it’s enough to say don’t rape, and then put all the responsibility for avoiding rape on rape victims – which is where all the responsibility is already resting anyway.”
What?
Seriously how do you people breed when you take such conclusions?
We are the ones saying that just educating people on not to rape even if you go into depth of why raping is bad with examples and victims telling their stories, there will still be rapists who do not care how hard you try to convince them not to rape and taking counter measurements will help reduce the chances of becoming a victim of such a delinquent.

I’ll take an analogy of my work.
I tell my clients not to use their birthday as password, they have a full right to do so but it is advised not to do so.
In case they do get “hacked” than they are not at fault, they did not ask for it but have taken insufficient counter measurements that do exists to prevent the criminal from gaining access.
The criminal committed the crime but you are responsible for not further minimizing the risks if it were possible.
He can still get hacked even when taking all countermeasures, someone can still get into the system but the chance of someone doing so will reduce.

This is the point we are making as opposite to the radical feminist who believe that just educating (and I seriously have no idea how you came to the conclusion that I meant “just sit them down and say rape is bad and is just having sex with someone who doesn’t want to”) people on rape should be limited to why rape is bad as opposite to the broader perspective of how, as an addition to the full reason why rape is bad (not a replacement before you try to imply I say this), to minimize your chances of rape.

Just because it is a criminal offence and just because you explain it to the fullest extend to the younger generation does not mean we shouldn’t take precautions and counter measures to reduce the chances of being targeted as a victim to a minimum.
If you can’t understand this then you have a serious problem.

I do not understand were you get the insane conclusion we say that we shouldn’t teach children not to rape when we are just opposing the delusion that we shouldn’t take precautions to a crime that is thought thoroughly or not at school.

Ah, the old bait-and-switch. Why then do you keep saying “teach boys not to rape” rather than “teach boys what rape is?”

So… we’re allowed to say “don’t rape,” or educate people on what it is we don’t want them doing? In what other context does that work?
“You there! Go build me a tree house!”
“How do I do that?”
“Ah, can’t tell you – that would be a bait and switch.”
Sorry, that’s just a nonsensical objection.

@CheckYourFacts
Check your facts. People already take precautions. Telling people to do what they’re already doing isn’t exactly helpful.

@Athywren
“Check your facts. People already take precautions. Telling people to do what they’re already doing isn’t exactly helpful.”
Cute but we also teach children not to rape in the Western world and duh but not telling people what to do to reduce the chances on a crime is exactly what Tfoot his video was about.

Those feminists were trying to imply they shouldn’t take precautions and insisted that we didn’t educate people on rape, implying that education alone will stop every person from ever becoming a rapist.
Which won’t happen, it is a delusional.

If the point was that they wanted better education on rape with the idea that it could decrease the chances of people become rapists than they should have used a slogan along the lines of “Better education in rape is what we ask”.

Heck you could even make that rhyme
“Better education in rape is what we ask,
So implant it quick and implant it fast”

Telling women not to drink is not exactly what I’d call empowering women. Ultimately, the power to stop rape is mostly in the hands of potential rapists.

In some parts of the world, groping random women is more or less “ok” if you are a guy. It is men not caring about the bodily autonomy of whoever they decide they can’t keep their hands off of and a culture with little social backlash or civil punishment for such things that is to blame – not that a woman decided to ride the bus or go out in public not wearing platemail. If you were from that culture, the above statement might seem pretty stupid and men just like to grope and women need to put up with it. But being in a culture where grabbing some random lady’s boob on the bus is a slap in the face, a bunch of pissed off passengers and maybe a sexual assault or misconduct charge, our culture has decided that is not cool (for the most part – obviously there are outliers) and random public groping is way less common here though certainly not eradicated. Granted, rape is more frequently committed by an acquaintance rather than a complete stranger.

If I go out to a bar at 1am drunk off my ass and get mouthy and get killed, the police aren’t going to go “oh he was drunk, got what he deserved, let’s go home” – that’s a crime, murder is bad, and somebody will hopefully go to jail for it. If I were a woman, went down to the bar at 1am drunk off my ass wearing a sexy outfit and I got raped in the bar or on the way home, it’d be a different story – because our culture sometimes leans towards that being an okay raping circumstance – that’s the victim’s fault.

Trying to shift the culture is all they are trying to do. It starts with the simple statement of “don’t rape”. Guys, gals, etc., don’t do anything to somebody without their consent – respect people and their bodies. If we as a society stop blaming victims, that’ll help too – if you got raped, that was not okay no matter what circumstances led up to it. We as a culture need to address the problem.

What a terrible argument.
No, it isn’t to kill someone if you hand them a knife first but that isn’t what this is about is it?

In any criminal action where you are in danger like murder, mugging or and get this RAPE.
You are allowed to defend yourself of the attacker, repel the attacker.
“I shouldn’t try to defend myself from getting murdered, you should just tell your children not to rape”
The entire straw man is on the idea that just because we educate our children something is bad that it won’t happen anymore in the future.
Chances will decrease but there are other factors that can decrease those chances.

We teach our children no to steal, we teach them that it is bad, yet still we lock our doors just to make sure because we know that just because we teach something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take precautions on the matter.

If someone shot you, is it your fault for not protecting yourself with a bullet proof vest? Our right to be safe from violence in society is taken as a given, not contingent on anyone’s abilities to defend themselves. You might as well argue that anybody who is the victim of any crime is to fault – why not just take victim blaming all the way? I mean, are you saying that if someone broke into your house, it *could have been made more secure* so it’s your fault

That’s also quite able-ist, not everybody is physically able to defend themselves.

The stupidity in this is that everyone will follow, which they won’t.
There is not a single person that says the victim is at fault but more that we should both educate in that they shouldn’t do it and how to avoid it.
And your last analogy is amazingly terrible.

It is simple.
We tell children stealing is bad, I learned so when I was 4.
It is something we bash into children minds as soon as possible.
However we don’t tell children to leave doors unlocked or even open because we know we don’t live in a perfect world.

We learn them the precaution of locking a door just to reduce our chances of getting robbed, even with a locked door you can still be robbed but it helps reduce the chances.
Of course we should still teach children that stealing is bad, that never changed, we just learned how to take a measurement to make it less likely.

The same goes for rape, yes raising awareness that rape is bad is something that we should do. However we should not ignore that out of the 7 billion humans on this planet, not every person is as kind as the next and that it is better to be armed with extra information on how to take precautions as opposite to staying blind fully ignorant in the believe that we can just teach it away and that it will disappear.

Prodegtion JUST SAID ABOVE that if you get raped it is YOUR FAULT for not being able to defend yourself, so Yes people blame victims. He wrote :

“Self-defense IS NOT HARD as you seem to believe. People who refuse to defend themselves deserve to be raped, in my view.”

My analogies were based on extending his argument to other crimes. Or is it consistent to say ‘if you got raped it was your fault, but not for other crimes?’

You might want to actually *read the posts I’m responding to* before commenting.

The point about ‘precautions’ about rape is that they are based on myths about rape that are not true, so taking them doesn’t do shit for the vast majority of rapes. However, men can’t stop telling women advice on the issue, as if they would know better than women.

Given what sort of positions you advocate, it seems everything you write is over the top hyperbole, which doesn’t exactly contribute much to an intelligent discussion. .How about you should shut up, go back to your room, and let the grown ups who can actually engage in a discussion where we clearly state our positions and back them up with reasons have an ADULT conversation. Hyperbole like that has no place in a serious discussion.

miles: If you were from that culture, the above statement might seem pretty stupid and men just like to grope and women need to put up with it. But being in a culture where grabbing some random lady’s boob on the bus is a slap in the face, a bunch of pissed off passengers and maybe a sexual assault or misconduct charge, our culture has decided that is not cool

Imposition is never cool. The apathy of this world to physical assault is horrifying when compared to the emotional outrage at indecent exposure. Rambo murdering humans with machine guns doesn’t raise an eyebrow but a nipple exposed (a mother breastfeeding her newborn, or a wardrobe ‘mishap’ during a halftime performance at a Superbowl game) can trigger a sickening storm of controversy.

There is a reason for the insane disparity and it is pure evil (slut-shaming). It may well be the source of all the evil because mothers are just that important. Reducing the future mothers of Humanity into a state of dependency was a master-stroke of horrifying evil genius by those who profit from broken children and suffering (religion). To save what’s left of what should be a deity species from extinction, women must be empowered. Broken men will never empower them. Women must empower themselves. They need agency but they are presently being conditioned by their mothers to believe in lies as ludicrous as the suggestion that Respecting Yourself = Preserving the ‘purity’ of your body for sale to men. That is not self-respect. It’s self-defeating madness. That line of ‘thinking’ prioritises investment in body (temporary illusions of beauty) at the expense of the mind.

We as a culture need to address the lying of mothers who tell their daughters they’re entitled to be given treats and deference in lieu of equality from men. It’s a trap. We need to scream for the heads of anyone slut-shaming girls to make them ashamed of their biology. That is what feminists should be doing: Girls (future mothers) must be protected from malicious, destructive shame.

If I go out to a bar at 1am drunk off my ass and get mouthy and get killed, the police aren’t going to go “oh he was drunk, got what he deserved, let’s go home”

Rape is assault, not murder. If you went to a bar at 1am drunk off your ass and got mouthy with a bunch of bikers, ridiculing them, belittling them, mocking their attempts to befriend you and buy you drinks….and got punched, the police probably would say that.

There is no advantage in combat. There is no value in rape. How long can ignorance of basic human nature be feigned before telling someone not to do something is no longer considered appropriate behaviour modification?

The fun thing is we don’t tell women not to take precautions. We specifically tell them to take precautions and to be worried. We are making apps that let a set of trusted friends know your position on Google Maps and alerts them to your emergency. We are talking about night buses. I even know of projects to cut down on date rape by detection glasses (if a common date rape drug like GBH or Rohypnol is added to a drink the glass changes colour).

We are not suggesting to women to go out and be care free. We have never done that. We aren’t stupid. No matter how much I think my girlfriend or daughter should be able to go out and get utterly smashed should they wish to (hypothetical daughter, real girlfriend) I would not ever recommend that they did on their own without a trusted friend who won’t leave them alone. Why? Because I know we don’t live in a world where women on the lash are as safe as men.

What we are pointing out that these precautions SHOULD be unnecessary. I don’t want women in India to have separate seating on buses. I loathe it when I have to travel on a packed train dangling on a running board while women get nice seats. But I know why they do get those. Because for what I want we would have to create a truly equal culture where women are not getting groped, harassed and raped.

Thunderfoot simply thinks when we tell “boys” not to rape we are removing all education about safety and common sense from girls. We can teach them to take precautions, what we cannot do is expect these set of frankly ludicrous precautions to be fail proof or expect women to be perfect in their utilisation. We cannot fault a woman for getting drunk in a strange place. Sometimes it happens. Compliance to these rules would ensure women live behind a sort of Burkha and would only work in an ideal world.

And it boils down to this.

You were on your own? How can you stop rape like that! Who would help you?

You were with another woman? What can a woman do to stop a strong man?

You were with another man? Slut.

It’s a no win scenario (in India at least, the western attitudes are changing after all).

I purposely go out of my way to use women’s toilets, women’s seating on public transport, women’s areas in gyms etc. just to defy the status quo. And whenever someone objects I’m not cowardly in my defense of my actions; I get angry, really angry, and let them know in no uncertain terms the immorality of this sex segregation. I’m not going to let our feminist society get in my way.

So just as I said – you go out of your way to make women, specifically women, feel uncomfortable and threatened in places and situations that have been established to help make them feel comfortable and secure. Your basis for behaving like this is that somehow these regulations might cause you some slight inconvenience, although the reality is that you are deliberately causing yourself more inconvenience by seeking out these confrontations.

If you have genuine objections then why not try discussing it calmly and reasonably with the people who have established the rules about these places?

Are you going to force your way into my home or place of business next? It seems like you just hate women. Why not just come clean on that? If you say that, I’ll just dismiss your views the way I’d dismiss the views of some idiot who said they were against civilization.

Fighting against sexual depression is bad?
Not to mention that using spots in public spaces that are specially reserved for a certain sex(which at sometimes regardless of which side you are on is extremely sexist) is not the same as invading public property, what a horrible comparison.
“Oh you sat next to me on the bus, are you going to kill my neighboor and take his house next?”
Ridiculous.

Then you accuse him of hating women, yet he seems to clearly have said “and let them know in no uncertain terms the immorality of this sex segregation.”. Indicating he is from a country where males are clearly suppressed, if he hates women for wanting equal rights on gym areas and bus seats than you are just as much implying that Arabian women hate men for wanting voting rights and the ability to actually get a drivers license.

What pisses me of the most is that you write him of as an idiot, while I think it is clear who is the idiot incapable of reading another persons argument or even respond to it with well backupped argumentation.
A 10 year old could understand that where he is from there is a diversity between women and men with unfair advantages presented to women.

Going off on predictability here you will probably come with pregnancy as an excuse next, which is a completely different case.
In my country we teach children to give their place on the bus to pregnant women or elders but of respect for their condition as they are more fragile than us, this is however taught to both girls and boys as we find it ridiculous that only men should get up to give their place to people with harder circumstances to move or stand up then usual.
Our gyms have no seperations for genders, our public transport have no reserved places for females (but do for handicapped people). Equality is a thing. Women and men have equal access to these means.

“Self-defense IS NOT HARD as you seem to believe. People who refuse to defend themselves deserve to be raped, in my view.”

I repeat again:

“Self-defense IS NOT HARD as you seem to believe. People who refuse to defend themselves deserve to be raped, in my view.”

Are you reading what this guy writes, or are you just a sock-puppet? He has just said rape is okay, since if you can’t defend yourself, screw you.

I also don’t see the ‘public space not open to me’ and ‘private space is a relevant distinction. I’m not allowed to go into a publicly funded spot for maintenance workers because there are good reasons related to safety that I should not go there.

Also, intent is not magic. If you do something and it makes others feel uncomfortable and you say “I don’t care” then you are an asshole. Avicenna above dealt very well with the notion of female-only spaces. It was men who made them necessary because men were harassing and groping women in public. These things still continue, so maybe women won’t demand them once they feel safe. If he says ‘if I’m making women uncomfortable, I don’t care” then he does not care about women.

Separate facilities for women do not give them special privileges. They are a response to women having no access to those spaces when men are present because men harass or grope women, preventing them from having access to the bus or the gym. These separate facilities are not special perks, they are necessary for equality because in society, men and women are not equal.

“Oh you sat next to me on the bus, are you going to kill my neighboor and take his house next?”
Ridiculous.

Not so. A man who won’t leave me alone in public no matter how much I want to avoid him is demonstrating the same callous disregard of other people’s feelings that suggest such a man would commit a crime. As I said before, separate spaces for women have often emerged because women were facing too much harassment in public. In countries where there are separate sections like India, maybe if this decreased there would be no more demand for female-only spaces.

I mean, nobody is telling men they can’t ride the bus, just they can’t ride the women’s only bus. In my country, we don’t have female-only buses since this hasn’t been a problem.

I would also contest that gender segregation in Saudi Arabia and a women’s only bus in India are in no way the same.

“I also don’t see the ‘public space not open to me’ and ‘private space is a relevant distinction. I’m not allowed to go into a publicly funded spot for maintenance workers because there are good reasons related to safety that I should not go there.”

So maintenance workers are a gender now?
Everyone(male and female) can become a maintenance worker so everyone has access to it but has to fit the criteria of having a job in it, they have equal chances at birth.
You don’t get born into the world as a maintenance worker.
The criteria of being a gender is not a free choice, before you were born the doctor didn’t ask me “Are you a boy or a girl?”.

And your comment was not in the section of “Self-defense IS NOT HARD as you seem to believe. People who refuse to defend themselves deserve to be raped, in my view.”
but in the section of
“I purposely go out of my way to use women’s toilets, women’s seating on public transport, women’s areas in gyms etc. just to defy the status quo. And whenever someone objects I’m not cowardly in my defense of my actions; I get angry, really angry, and let them know in no uncertain terms the immorality of this sex segregation. I’m not going to let our feminist society get in my way.”

Making his point on self defense completely irrelevant in this section as that is not the point of the comment you responded too. As much as I am behind you that women are never at fault for being raped, this does not belong in this discussion, if you do than you are portraying humans as one dimensional beings.

And “Also, intent is not magic. If you do something and it makes others feel uncomfortable and you say “I don’t care” then you are an asshole. “, really? No shit, pretty sure we learn children etiquette like don’t throw a door in someones face, be polite and thankful and so on.

But in this case that becomes completely irrelevant as she is uncomfortable because the other person is a man, which is almost the same as this.
Again back to the ‘funded spot for maintenance workers’ argument, I have no choice over my sex nor should it be a privilege of being of a certain sex, we have a name for that, it is sexism.

“It was men who made them necessary because men were harassing and groping women in public. These things still continue, so maybe women won’t demand them once they feel safe.”
You mean it is like a precaution? Like I don’t know, teaching women self defense or teaching them on how to minimize their chances of rape? However greatly exaggerated, like enforcing a dress code, prohibiting the drinking of alcohol or any other point Tfoot made that is exaggerated by so many feminist extremists.

“If he says ‘if I’m making women uncomfortable, I don’t care” then he does not care about women.”.
This is a weak point, just because something makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean we should limit other people their freedom, sure certain actions can make you uncomfortable but if it is about the gender people are born with than you should accept you are a sexist.We don’t have separate elevators in our society, do we?

The issue is not addressed by splitting up women and men, it is made worse .
Now those women will fear men even more and those men can grow a disgust to women because of the special treatment (possibly resulting into more domestic abuse at a later age or a deep hatred like prodegtron to the point they believe rape can be okay which of course we know is not true), believing they are unchangeable beasts as clearly the situation is so bad in reducing the amount of gropers that we have to resort to separation.
Here a campaign against rape (or groping as the two can be perceived as different) is truly necessary as opposite to taking an over the top counter measure by limiting another’s freedom and possibly affecting the psychology of both genders in the country.

Tfoot does not say we should legalize a nation wide dressing code(which we technically already have since public nudity is illegal) but that we should make women aware that sometimes it is better to keep in mind of what your clothes could tell to other people which is a completely different matter as how some feminists make it appear to be(that we enforce them to dress a certain way).
In the same way I would say we shouldn’t prohibit drinking but that we should make teenagers more aware of how dangerous drinking too much is and how it can increase their chances on a multitude of bad subjects, not just rape.

We are just mad to hear that everything is the fault of not educating children rape(something which tends to be done just as much as stealing) is bad and that minimizing your risk of getting in such a situation should not be taught to children (remember “Don’t tell me how to dress, tell your children not to rape”).
Rape is never the fault of the victim but if you know such a thing exist you should not pretend that you can’t do something to minimize the risk.
This can be done with everything, if you are the victim, it is in no way your fault, but you should do your best to minimize the risk of the crime being able to take place.

And yeah, maybe you didn’t grope any women, but sometimes as members of SOCIETY we have to accept a few trivial limitations at times to protect people who are getting pissed and shat on or harmed. It’s sort of why in order to go into a public school to teach a course, even though I have not actually committed any crimes, I have to be fingerprinted.

So, women are fine to be in public, and if they’re getting harassed and groped its their problem? There are people like you, and then there are men who find it unacceptable and are willing to put up with some minor inconveniences. People like you are just assholes that most people in society are going to ignore no matter how much you whine whine whine.

All said, a guy who does nothing but engage in over the top hyperbole, the level of maturity in that discourse is all of 8 years old. And now it’s obvious that checkyourfacts is just your sockpuppet.

I will also add – separate facilities for women do not give them special privileges because men already have more privileges than women. Special programs for minorities do not oppress white people. Take your entitled whining somewhere else.

“All said, a guy who does nothing but engage in over the top hyperbole, the level of maturity in that discourse is all of 8 years old. And now it’s obvious that checkyourfacts is just your sockpuppet.”
Excuse me?
What a claim to make, I only backup his argument on that sexual diversion in case of public facilities normally everyone has a right too is wrong. On the point of ever blaming the victim for the crime I am on your side.
Does that mean he should call me your sock puppet because we agree that rape is plain wrong regardless of the situation?
I disagree with you however that women should in no way take responsibility to minimize their risks, just because something is illegal and taught in schools doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn precautions to our kids.

This is how arguments with a multitude of people works, some will agree on a certain points and try to convince the other party, others may agree on a point but in further dept differentiate.
An 8 year old would get this.

“So, women are fine to be in public, and if they’re getting harassed and groped its their problem? There are people like you, and then there are men who find it unacceptable and are willing to put up with some minor inconveniences. People like you are just assholes that most people in society are going to ignore no matter how much you whine whine whine”
No one ever said that, we are saying that the measurement of separation by sex is by far the worst solution possible. It limits the others freedom regardless of guilty or not, instead a campaign to raise awareness on groping would probably do wonders.
Can’t you see this is the exact same as a Civil rights movement?
What’s next, men aren’t allowed to vote because they might vote for groping to be legal.

“I will also add – separate facilities for women do not give them special privileges because men already have more privileges than women. Special programs for minorities do not oppress white people. Take your entitled whining somewhere else.”
Special programs and public facilities are two different things.
I have no need in a women’s guide of how to endure pregnancy but I do have just as much right to go to the gym as my girlfriend has as she has just as much right to take any bus like me.
Those two are unisex and not gender specific like for instance a program on how to endure pregnancy.

And special facilities for men? More privileges than women? What are you on about?
I go to the same dentist as my older sisters and my younger brother.
I go to the same doctor when I get sick as my older sisters and younger brother.
My younger sister (who moved away) went to the same school and with that took the same trams, the same train and walked on the same side of the road to get home.
Never was I separated from my 4 sisters through a special facility.
Heck I even share the hospital I got born with my older sister.
In my country even boy/girlscouts aren’t a thing, my older sister was my scout leader when I was young and my younger sister was in the same group.

I guess I’m supposed to infer that you support this sex segregation. Fuck you.

Yes, my actions are completely rational. Each and every one. What’s irrational is that feminists feel uncomfortable or threatened by the presence of a man. There is certainly no obligation on my part to pander to their irrational fear of men, in fact, maybe some of them will get over it if I do it enough.

“Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
You imply that he even does that to begin with.
And that isn’t a support for sex segregation at all.
My girlfriend BEATS ME when SHE IS MAD.

Does that mean I should just break up with her or that all women be put behind shock resistant glass when a man is nearby?
The latter is your answer and the first would be mine, but as she is my girlfriend I have chosen to forgive her while not implanting sex segregation to stop here from beating me.
Even if I would, Murphy’s law would occur,
“Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong”
-Edward A. Murphy

Reducing your chances is a good tactic but never a fool proof one, you can arm your house with every possible form of security and someone would still be able to steal from it, you can do your very best to avoid an accident and still get one, you can do anything you can to avoid rape and still get raped.

This does not indicate that you shouldn’t try to reduce the chances you have power over.
By educating people that rape is a terrible act you already decrease a factor but you can still decrease those chances further by also educating not for instance to get drunk as regardless of people being educated or not, there still exists the chance that people will rape you when you are out cold due to your own fault(they are at fault for rape, you are at fault for passing out).

” If you went to a bar at 1am drunk off your ass and got mouthy with a bunch of bikers, ridiculing them, belittling them, mocking their attempts to befriend you and buy you drinks….and got punched, the police probably would say that.”

It is expected that atheists would be decent. The main target of atheists is to eradicate religion and false believes and ensure humanism. This itself is an extreme tall commitment and fight against giants. Why waste time is all that crap the believers do and even find ( ill ) logic for what they do against humanity.

Most rapes are not the result of some “going to a bar and deliberately pissing off a bunch of bikers” kind of scenario, so it’s just stupid and condescending to give women that kind of”advice”. They already know that. Most of them don’t do that, and too many of them get raped anyway.

And can we please stop with this ignorant idea that men are somehow provoked to become rapists by what women wear. I am perfectly capable of looking a woman, finding her attractive and NOT RAPING. Men are not mindless automatons who helplessly turn into rapists at the sight of a short skirt. Those who do are choosing to do so and the blame is entirely on them, not on the target of their selfish, evil act.

Women should be offended by Thunderfart’s obnoxious,condescending simple minded self serving whining but so should men; those of us who have any kind of self respect anyway.

What do you expect when our own ‘allies’ are using ‘well my wife doesn’t mind if I grope her, so it’s okay to grope other women’ as excuses for why ‘taking advantage of a person’s inability to say no’ is somehow different than ‘rape’.

Women should stop doing that. Fear is all we have to fear because being worried doesn’t keep you safe; fear makes girls malicious and antisocial. In fear, they degrade men. They can’t protect themselves with fear. Hostility generates hostility. Fear validates itself.

The need imagined by broken men who impose themselves onto women is created by the slut-shaming of girls, who are made to be ashamed of feeling like a human girl by those who want girls to sell themselves instead of sleeping with whom they please. Amanda Todd was murdered by girls who want to exploit the lies of misogyny.

Women can take care of themselves. Marriage is sexist.

Because I know we don’t live in a world where women on the lash are as safe as men.

It’s not that simple. Safe from what? Inflicted suffering? If guys generated the kind of suffering women inflict routinely, they’d not walk away without dripping blood. Women are actually safer than men are; they’re just a great deal more reckless about inflicting pain. They refuse to accept that deceit is malicious but no one values being deceived or degraded. Women are confused about why because girls are told they deserve to be valued for being difficult. Honesty is the only virtue; everything else is malicious (worth less than worthless).

Girls are set up by lies so their entire perspective is corrupted. They screen out every honest guy. Honesty is rude, apparently. Lying is nice. So guys that respect them are blocked. They only reward guys that disrespect them. Then they whine that men don’t respect them. This issue is not about covering up skin or not drinking too much; this is about malicious and abusive – predatory – behaviour.

Women want to be taken care of. Men don’t want to take care of them.

So they fight.

What we are pointing out that these precautions SHOULD be unnecessary.

They really should. But you cannot induce the desire to pay without inducing desire to rape. Women want to make men crazy with desire so that they do stupid things. Like get married. Or rape. Women want the former but not the latter. But you can’t have one without the other. That’s not apologising for rape. It’s merely the truth.

“Women want to be taken care of. Men don’t want to take care of them. So they fight.”

Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
INSULTING and wrong.
And that’s an incredibly sweeping generalization to apply to all women. Or MOST women. Or whatever you’re going to say about “I didn’t mean ALL women are mean and vicious and too stupid to understand why being mean and vicious doesn’t work out in their favor!” That’s a lot of blanket nastiness there, chief. We are not a borg collective. If you think this is a true reflection of reality because it’s all you’ve noticed, then that tells me you’re doing a piss poor job of noticing women who don’t fit your crappy narrative.

Also, if you think you can boil down the cause of rape to “men being crazy with desire”, then you are too mind bogglingly ignorant of what you’re talking about to be taken seriously.

The picture seems to imply that women are holding out for a man they might actually want to be with, and aren’t interested in being criticized for not being with someone right now. Why is that somehow a bad thing?

Then you do the predictable whine that women are not going with the ‘nice guys’ who tell ‘the truth’ instead of some other guy who is not telling the truth. What truths are women averse to? It seems you’re only *truth* is that women are automatically leeches looking for a guy to pamper them, and I assure you, this is pretty much false all the time.You disrespect women, so I’d screen you out (on top of being a lesbian.)

A woman expressing a lack of interest in you isn’t deceit, and it isn’t malicious as one is not *entitled* to a relationship with someone.

If your case it that their appearance deceived you, then you need to get better communication skills and realize that women aren’t sitting around trying to find ways you make you interested in them. We have better things to do.

It’s worth noting that telling people what you consider to be the truth is not the same as telling people the truth.
If I believe it is true that the sky is a cat, and I tell you so, I am being honest when I do so, but I am not telling you the truth.

Also – fairly important point – rape isn’t a compliment. “I only raped you because you’re sooooo pretty and you drove me mad with desire!” Bullshit. Rape is an act of disregard, not of desire.

So you think men are unable to think for themselves, process new information, and choose to change their behavior after they leave their mothers’ care? (And what about the fathers?)

You empower women by telling women how to take power / control for themselves. Power is never given. You take it for yourself….Everyone needs to treat themselves better. I do this thing where I treat myself right and then I’m not reliant on others to treat me…If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand power. Empowering women = educating them to ignore their mothers’ lies about what they deserve or what they’re entitled to if they disrespect themselves enough to deny themselves. You cannot have power if you are dependent.

Subjective morality doesn’t mean rape is ok if you decide it is – it means it isn’t imposed by forces outside of our experience, not that there’s no rational basis for morality, nor that it’s entirely about individual opinion. Morality deals with interpersonal interactions, which makes it, by definition, not down to a single person’s whim. When you’re the only person you ever interact with, then fine, you can decide what’s right or wrong… but that won’t be morality, since you have nobody with whom to interact.

Johnny, that’s a lot of rambling jargon. You seem to have pulled all your information from either MRA sites or pick-up-manuals, or the most banal pop culture stereotypes that might as well be summed up as ‘bitches be crazy y0.’ Then again, I’m not sure, as you’re writing seems designed to be hard to read and unclear.

You seem to assume that women are out there looking to manipulate guys emotionally for (I guess) some free drinks or something. That’s what I hear a lot, but it’s mostly just a load of crap from guys upset that women are indifferent to them and their attempts to get women’s attention.

“They only reward guys that disrespect them. Then they whine that men don’t respect them.”

The typical “Nice Guy” (TM) whining. I suspect it’s all just projection and envy. Your whole ranting about the horrible emotional damage women inflict on men, it’s as if you feel entitled to something from women. Just accept the fact, overall, women are less interested in you than you are in them.

“Women want to be taken care of. Men don’t want to take care of them.”

First sentence is false, women *get educations and get jobs* because being economically dependent on men makes them second-class citizens.

“But you cannot induce the desire to pay without inducing desire to rape. Women want to make men crazy with desire so that they do stupid things. Like get married”

So… is the first suggesting that because a guy thinks I should be excited if he offers to buy me something (when I’m minding my own business and if I wanted it I’d pay for it myself) I’m to blame for rape? I also don’t think women are going out of their way to make men ‘crazy with desire’ either. The other thing is, men tend to be just as interested in marriage as women are, if not more so. Not all men are just mindless sex-bots who want action without a relationship. Marriages are also not men taking care of women, but partnerships where who does what is negotiated by the couple.

I also take that your real issue with being against ‘slut shaming’ (and marriage) is that you don’t like the fact that some women don’t want to have sex with you.

This was the stupidest thing you wrote:

” The apathy of this world to physical assault is horrifying when compared to the emotional outrage at indecent exposure.”

You then cite “Rambo” as evidence. The outrage over movie content is not the same as outrage over what happens in real life. People are not outrages over Rambo because it is fake, nobody is getting shot. In real life, at least in our nation, violence is a huge deal, and though there exist people who freak out over breast-feeding in public, the law is not on their side.

Men don’t respect women because men who rape and harass women are mostly cowards who avoid being around people who will call them out on their behavior. If they find they have less and less spaces where they can be free from criticism, they’ll stop. If men criticize rape culture, rapists can’t justify what they do.

TF could have written the advice and information letter we gt from college after a guy went around on campus attacking women (which nobody minded, apparently) and finally trying to abduct one:Don’t walk alone, especially after dark.
Helpful advice on how I was supposed to continue my education when I was not supposed to be out after dark (winter term, it is pretty dark by 4pm) was not included…

When women do figure out a safe workaround, they get accused of being misandrists for behaving as if some men might be potential rapists. Then someone comes along and aggressively imposes themselves into the safe space, thereby reinforcing the fact that women might not be safe anywhere.

Odd considering how ALL people can benefit from not being out at dark (actually men ESPECIALLY, since men are MORE LIKELY TO BE THE VICTIMS OF ASSAULT AT NIGHT, as I keep putting out to no fucking avail!!!)

What about the woman who does take precautions but then a man aggressively imposes himself on her anyway, calling her a misandrist for thinking that some men might be potential rapists? Just like you aggressively impose yourself on women in places you have been excluded from. What then?

I’m sorry, but your fragile little status based male ego isn’t worth my safety. Other men aren’t such misogynists, so the poor little fee fees of the likes of you I really don’t care about. Be bothered, hurt and offended all you want, the world doesn’t care about your entitled whining and hissy fits.

As most rapists are trusted friends, family, significant others and aquaintences and women are not psychic, how the holy hell are we supposed to know who the rapists are and are not?
Jeez, does being as incapable of thought and empathy as you hurt?
It should.

Johnny, you’re making us (men, that is) sound ridiculous – like we’re completely beholden to a combination of animal nature and relics of our upbringing and utterly defenceless against both feminine attractiveness and our own impulses.

Please stop it. We’re better than that.

But hey, thanks for pointing out precisely how these myths hurt men as well as women.

That is correct. You tell women to stop worrying about what they cannot control (the way others treat them) and worry about what they can control (treating themselves right). You cannot tell a rapist not to rape because he’s emotionally insane and the victim of lies and violent imposition during early childhood. Rapists can’t be fixed so they should really be euthanised. They’re empathy-bankrupt so you can tell men not to do it all you like but at some point, questions need to be asked about why women are feigning ignorance of this aspect of human nature. There is no value in rape. Do you believe rape is worthwhile? If you don’t, why would you tell men not to be insane? Is that how Crimes of Passion are deterred?

“It’s not allowed. So don’t do it.”

So you think men are unable to think for themselves, process new information, and choose to change their behavior after they leave their mothers’ care? (And what about the fathers?)

What new information? If their mothers have lied to them about women, they will value the wrong women with predictable consequences. How are men to know the truth so they can value the right women if women don’t correct the lies they’ve been told? What about their fathers? What would the johns know?

smrnda: The typical “Nice Guy” (TM) whining. I suspect it’s all just projection and envy. Your whole ranting about the horrible emotional damage women inflict on men, it’s as if you feel entitled to something from women. Just accept the fact, overall, women are less interested in you than you are in them.

I thought empowering women was the issue of importance. You seem to want to launch personal smear. This is me. I have nothing to hide and you can decide for yourself whether I’m someone women aren’t interested in. I’d prefer to return to what’s important because there are a lot of women who seem to think I would want to pay for a dependent to raise my children when they can’t account for the last decade or two or explain why they cannot take care of themselves.

First sentence is false, women *get educations and get jobs* because being economically dependent on men makes them second-class citizens.

We agree on the importance of economic independence. When we remove the perceived need for lies and force used to ‘persuade’, we’ll be getting somewhere. Until then, the only real source of non-biological need will continue to be the very true first sentence.

The other thing is, men tend to be just as interested in marriage as women are, if not more so.

Yes, I hear men talk about “catching” Mrs Right all the time. You need to stop degrading the conversation and start respecting yourself. No one values your lies but you.

” If you went to a bar at 1am drunk off your ass and got mouthy with a bunch of bikers, ridiculing them, belittling them, mocking their attempts to befriend you and buy you drinks….and got punched, the police probably would say that.”

Do you have some examples of the police doing that? The impression I have is that the police don’t like bikers very much and would tend to take your side just on general principles.

Also, in your scenario, it seems like the victim kept harassing the bikers until he got hit. Harassing people is wrong so there’s a certain rough justice to him getting his comeuppance and the police might take note of that. That doesn’t seem to apply in any of the common rape scenarios I can think of, so maybe your analogy needs some work?

Johnny, you keep talking about lies but you don’t come out and say what these lies are; could you please clarify, using *specific and not vague language.* What lies are rapists subjected to? And how are you able to generalize about such a large portion of people, as it is a pretty common crime. What lies are mothers telling daughters? Sons? Please be concrete and specific, or else you’re just spouting fluff with no substance.

Rape is also rarely a crime of passion, it’s typically premeditated and relies on lots of manipulation. It’s the opposite of an impulsive crime most of the time.

“You tell women to stop worrying about what they cannot control (the way others treat them) and worry about what they can control (treating themselves right).”

That’s the most patronizing bullshit I’ve ever heard. People are entitled to worry about things beyond their control because many things beyond any person’s control *can still have a huge negative impact.* Would you tell people who are being bombed by an enemy to just ‘stop worrying’ since they can’t stop the bombing. Ending slavery was beyond the power of people who were enslaved, the moral people listened to their complaints and decided what they could do to help, either by aiding slaves in escaping or fighting for abolition. Part of *civilization* is taking responsibility for making things safe for everybody. I’m not Black, but I’m willing to take responsibility for making life better for Black people *at least* by simply calling out racist shit when I hear it. “Just focus on yourself” is positive thinking bullshit that doesn’t work, and actively discourages positive changes from being made. Try to read “Bright Sided” by Ehrenreich. It’s a good book on that topic.

If your goal is to empower a group of people, you have to *listen to them* about what is empowering for them, not tell them what is.

Your pipe picture is kind of cute, but I’m sitting in a building that says ‘no smoking’ and nobody is smoking here, so it really totally fails to make a point, since there are many instances when putting up a sign that says you can’t do something actually stops people from doing it. If someone smokes outside of the entrance, they would be told *right away* by another patron not to do that. The staff would not have to intervene.

Part of this is a huge shift in public opinion regarding whether smoking is *acceptable* behavior and where it’s okay. I’ve been told by older people that defying a ‘no smoking’ sign in a building used to be hip and cool, but now that smoking isn’t so cool it would just be obnoxious and not defiant and hip. Rape is muc the same way, and there’s evidence that telling men not to rape does work, and here it is

Contrary to your beliefs, rapists rely on rationalizations; weaken the capacity for rationalization, and you reduce the chance that some portion of would-be rapists follow through on the act.

” I’d prefer to return to what’s important because there are a lot of women who seem to think I would want to pay for a dependent to raise my children when they can’t account for the last decade or two or explain why they cannot take care of themselves. ”

If you are implying that there exist women you think are not responsible who think you would want to marry them and have kids, O BIG FUCKING DEAL. You’re free not to associate with those women and you are free not to marry them. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. I mean, there are lots of men out there who probably think I’m *SO* missing out by not being with them. As long as they don’t bother me when I’m in public, they can sit around and mope all they want to.

Really? That just might be true of the commonly imagined slavering beast who leaps out of alleys or from behind bushes. But that’s a pretty uncommon scenario.

Most rapes are committed by people who just don’t care (enough) about another person’s right to make their own decisions and choices about their sexual partners and/or their sexual activities. They are also willing, about 30% of them anyway, to use threats or just enough force to make people do what they don’t want to do. But they are not insane in an emotional or any other sense of the word.

Most rapists are fairly ordinary members of fairly ordinary social groups. Even if they’re not overly enthusiastic about changing their behaviour in response to a public education program, they’ll certainly change some of their behaviour – the bragging part at least – if their social group does. Merely knowing that most of the people they know label their (now concealed) behaviour as rape is a teaching tool all on its own.

Psychopomp Gecko Even if it were true, do you really think it’s women in charge of news companies, advertisers, all that, saying what women should be like, what they should look like, and so on? Do you really think the obsession with purity and sexuality of women comes from the women themselves, ultimately?

No. It comes from mothers who slut-shame children. It’s amazing that girls imagine their mothers made them associate trauma and unpleasantness with sex, for their sake. Power wants broken children. The Church wants suffering. Industry wants slaves. The military wants cannon fodder. All the leeches who profit from exploiting suffering are lined up behind misogyny, promoting the sentimental sleaze so ludicrously prevalent in children’s emotional education. Each plantation is conditioning their slaves via entertainment media. Love is exploitation. It’s used to make slaves suffer and die to please their controllers. The broken children of broken mothers have been dying to impress for a long time.

If you’re really so big on making men out to be better, then why do you say it should be ok for them to act more like base animals than women do?

Women have the power to determine whether the exchange is combative or constructive. They fire the first shots of every skirmish. Having been led to believe they’re entitled to exploit the credulity of men, they inflict suffering with malicious intent. They are the first offenders. It’s not okay for men to rape. How many times do I have to repeat myself? Men rape in retaliation, frustration, fury. They’ve been reduced. They’re broken. Rape is how they communicate. Women don’t need to be combative. Were it not for Society’s slut-shaming of biology, women would be bullying men for sex (see our 98.7% DNA cousins, the Bonobo monkeys, for how Society should be structured; Bonobo females control everything).

A Hermit:Those who do are choosing to do so and the blame is entirely on them, not on the target of their selfish, evil act.

I agree. So you can go on blaming them like women have been doing for centuries (how’s that been working out?) or you can empower women to no longer need to lean on men. When women don’t need to peddle sex as if it were a favour, the perceived value of using force to take what is presently being framed as a prize evaporates.

yellowsubmarine:And that’s an incredibly sweeping generalization to apply to all women. Or MOST women. Or whatever you’re going to say about “I didn’t mean ALL women are mean and vicious and too stupid to understand why being mean and vicious doesn’t work out in their favor!” That’s a lot of blanket nastiness there, chief.

I wasn’t going to say that because it’s not true. ALL women are wearing cosmetics. Deceit is malicious. It sounds like you’re too stupid to understand why being deceitful doesn’t work out in your favour. Truth is never nasty. Truth is unemotional. Women are just disassociated from the reality where deception is malicious.

smrnda: The picture seems to imply that women are holding out for a man they might actually want to be with, and aren’t interested in being criticized for not being with someone right now. Why is that somehow a bad thing?

It implies that women are (with)holding as they wait for what they’ve been led to believe they deserve by malicious misogynist propaganda just like that meme. It surreptitiously smears women who are single (independent) as it tells them they deserve to be dependent on men. But this world doesn’t owe anyone anything. Women who sit and pine waiting for a man to come take care of them deserve nothing.

What truths are women averse to?

Biological truths. Truths about their mothers lies. Truths about the non-existent value of their lies. Truths about what they deserve and what men will do if you screen out decency. Truths about their mothers. We live in Polite Society. It’s not honest nor civil. It’s Polite because truth offends malicious mothers who want to peddle lies to men and children.

Chaos Engineer: Harassing people is wrong so there’s a certain rough justice to him getting his comeuppance and the police might take note of that. That doesn’t seem to apply in any of the common rape scenarios I can think of, so maybe your analogy needs some work?

I don’t believe in rough justice, revenge or retaliation but I can understand those who do. The analogy is perfect; you’re completely out of touch with the hostile nature of women who simply do not fear consequences when they’re viciously and callously inflicting suffering. Most men are decent. But you cannot do A indefinitely without inducing B.

smrnda:Johnny, you keep talking about lies but you don’t come out and say what these lies are; could you please clarify, using *specific and not vague language.* What lies are rapists subjected to? And how are you able to generalize about such a large portion of people, as it is a pretty common crime. What lies are mothers telling daughters? Sons?

You know perfectly well what the lies are. I’m not going to be drawn into listing all the lies but cosmetics is used to create outrageous illusions like this one.

The biggest lie of all is The Big Lie, the ridiculous lie that says women who like sex are sluts and that women who deny their biological desire are valued or prized.

We live in a Polite Society of lies. Truth is felt to be rude by the victims of lies, who perceive lies as nice. Women aren’t the only ones getting burned by penalising those who respect themselves enough to not need to maliciously deceive. Everyone is destroying themselves with their shrewd preference for lies. You have to be in denial to imagine there could be a point to anything in a world cheapened by lies.

You’re free not to associate with those women and you are free not to marry them. Nobody is putting a gun to your head.

If I wanted a mother that wasn’t going to maliciously hurt our children with lies, I would have to wait for the next life. Every woman I meet is wearing cosmetic banners on their faces that scream, “I value deceiving you”. I am not bringing life into this world because it is insane to imagine a meaningful relationship is possible with a liar.

I was wondering where Jonny comes from

I wasn’t remotely interested in you at all. I would weigh the validity of your logical arguments and counter them but I suppose if I couldn’t….but didn’t want to accept truth…

What do you want to know about me? You’ll be disappointed. I’m very boring.

Johnny, all you do is talk about ‘lies’ without actually saying what lies are being told. If I said ‘candidate X is telling big lies about the budget!’ people would expect me to supply something concrete, like ‘candidate X is refusing to acknowledge that the tax cuts he proposes will cause a budget shortfall.”

You also didn’t bother to respond to my point about how sometimes, people actually *don’t do* things you tell them not to do, nor did you provide a response against the Canadian study that demonstrates you can teach men not to rape. I go with empirical evidence over some random dude’s ranting as a measure of truth any day.

Yet another laughably ignorant bloviating mansplainer trying to school us on what’s best for women…

You tell women to stop worrying about what they cannot control (the way others treat them) and worry about what they can control (treating themselves right).

What the fuck does that even mean? You think if a woman “treats herself right” she won’t get raped? Do you have ANY idea what you’re talking about?

You cannot tell a rapist not to rape…

Yes, actually, we CAN educate men and boys on how to treat women; we CAN make them aware that certain behaviors will be called “rape” even if they aren’t of the violently coercive type (such as taking advantage of a women who’s too drunk to resist); we CAN create social climates where certain behaviors and attitudes get less or no reinforcement; and we CAN make education and social services available to help boys and men deal better with the feelings and consequences of desires, relationships, sexual traumas, etc. None of these things make rape go away altogether, but they can, and do, reduce instances of rape and other harmful behaviors, and give our half of the species a wider variety of responses to women and sex-related problems.

I’d like you to tell us, Johnny, why you, and other guys like you, are so adamantly opposed to any idea of getting men and boys to behave better. Why is this such a repulsive concept that you have to shout it down every time it’s mentioned? What can you possibly hope to accomplish by attacking the idea of encouraging men and boys to act better? If you can answer that question, I might take you seriously.

There are objective consequences for Jews to be out of the ghetto after dark. However, accepting that is saying that antisemitism is okay and good and fine and should not be protested. Nice to know you’ll always be on the side of the oppressor.

No one cares what you hate. How’s about you fuck right off so we don’t have to read you blaming women for not preventing men from physically assaulting and sexually torturing them? You’re an awful person who only ever comes to FTBs to mansplain and spread rape apology and toxic sexist garbage. The only point you have driven home is that you have issues. Go have them where rape survivors don’t have to tolerate them.

It’s because of people like you that we have prisons, since people who do what you say you do (I doubt you really do them) are a danger to all people and civilization itself, and cannot be allowed to make the rest of the world miserable.

If I wanted a mother that wasn’t going to maliciously hurt our children with lies, I would have to wait for the next life. Every woman I meet is wearing cosmetic banners on their faces that scream, “I value deceiving you”. I am not bringing life into this world because it is insane to imagine a meaningful relationship is possible with a liar.

Dude, your insanity is matched by your incoherence. You really need to get help with your anger issues. Oh, and DO NOT repeat DO NOT start dating again until you’ve got those issues resolved. You’ll be no good to any woman — or to yourself — if you’re so incapable of taking responsibility instead of lashing out and blaming others for the misery in your life. I’ve had my share of woman troubles too, and trust me, your response, as I see it here, is not the way to go.

Johnny, I understand that you have strong, overwhelming feelings about these issues, but I cannot engage in a discussion with someone who does not write clearly and directly. I am a very concrete person. You made this assertion: “Were it not for Society’s slut-shaming of biology, women would be bullying men for sex (see our 98.7% DNA cousins, the Bonobo monkeys, for how Society should be structured; Bonobo females control everything). ”
Am I correct in assuming “Johnny thinks that, were it not for social conditioning, women would always be wanting sex from men?” That’s an unfalsifiable claim. The other issue is that people are products of both culture and biology, and I see no reason to treat one set of compulsions as more authentic as the other, nor are people *required* to follow their biological drives if their reason dictates otherwise. It’s good for us to understand both our biological compulsions and cultural conditioning, but people are still free to reject both when they choose to act. My biology might tell me to do lots of things that would no longer be a good idea.

On the whole ‘malicious deceit’ – people are entitled to do what they want to look attractive, whining about ‘cosmetics’ as ‘malicious deceit’ is as ridiculous as complaining that it’s malicious deceit that women take showers since, if they smelled bad, you wouldn’t want to have sex with them so much. Is it ‘malicious deceit’ to wear clothing?

The other thing Johnny, is being in a relationship with a man does not mean that a woman is dependent on a man. There exist plenty of more or less egalitarian relationships where the man and woman both support each other. Perhaps you’re just jealous of them? I hear some men are losing out no that women have greater ability to live independently.

“Women have to give up their freedom if they want to be saved from their fellow humans”

ALL people do. It is part of self-defense. It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITY ALONE TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T GET RAPED. And it isn’t hard, anyway. You seem to think it takes a genius. Which is probably why you think women can’t do it.

“We teach people not to murder, not to rob. It works. It reduces murder and robbery rates.”

BULLSHIT. Not only is there no evidence to suggest that, there is plenty of evidence demonstrating that that is not true.
The fact is, you CAN NOT TEACH MORALITY. Whether or not someone believes murder, theft, or rape is wrong is ENTIRELY A PERSONAL CHOICE.

“people like thunderf00t want to teach women how not to get raped, but do not want to teach men how not to rape”

And here is the goal post shift. There is a difference between “teach men not to rape” and “teach men how not to rape”. Not raping is pretty easy. Most men know how to do it. But whether or not they WANT to do it is a different matter; is entirely up to them, and is not something that can be or should be taught.

“Whatever precautions women take, men will continue raping women if they are not taught to get rid of patriarchal misogyny”

No, not necessarily. As long as women are taught how not to get raped. That is teaching them a skill, it is not teaching them morality.

I can’t believe anyone would make such an ignorant and clearly false statement in any public forum. Anyone who remembers the experience of his/her own childhood and adolescence can see how dead wrong prodegtion is here. What, you think most people don’t rob or kill people because of genetic hard-wiring? You think parents, teachers, cops, and other adult role-models have ZERO ability to teach kids how to behave? You think a kid’s environment has no role at all in what behavior a kid is conditioned to repeat?

But whether or not they WANT to do it is a different matter; is entirely up to them, and is not something that can be or should be taught.

Ah yes, the infantile idiot with no common sense is a libertarian, eager as always to discount any notion that people can, or should, go to any trouble to do anything decent for other people. Why am I not surprised?

This is probably why prodegtion was banned from PZ’s blog: he’s simply too stupid and too infantile to participate in a grownup conversation.

“The fact is, you CAN NOT TEACH MORALITY. Whether or not someone believes murder, theft, or rape is wrong is ENTIRELY A PERSONAL CHOICE.”

Personal choices aren’t made in a vacuum and beliefs don’t form in a vacuum either. They’re in large part a product of how you are raised and the culture that surrounds you. That’s why people from different cultures and religious backgrounds can differ in how they define crimes and what they consider immoral or not, and also in how they raise an individual to relate to and interact with other people.

You seem to think that only sociopaths or psychopaths – people who may be the most impervious to outside teaching – are the only ones who rape people (or commit other crimes), which is also far from true. Most people who commit a crime justify it to themselves in some way and even think of themselves as normal, whether they’re murderers, domestic abusers, thieves, or rapists; and their justifications are often supported by toxic ideas in the surrounding culture. (And heck, even the percentage of sociopaths seems to differ from one culture to another.)

That’s why, to give one of many examples, a nice family man in the southern US in the 1940s could think of himself as a good, normal person while still participating in a lynching (or in a gang-rape – like Recy Taylor, a black woman walking home from church with some friends when she was kidnapped and gangraped by a group of white men who were just ordinary folks with families of their own and jobs). It’s so very easy for people to justify evil acts. It happens all the time, as long as the right cultural narratives are there – upstanding members of society have justified slavery, child marriages, child labor, etc. The idea that morality can’t be taught is ludicrous in the extreme.

You also seem oblivious to the fact that many women already go about aware of the fact that they could be raped even by people they ought to trust, and they do their best to prevent it while still leading a normal life (for instance, ever hear of Schrodinger’s Rapist?). But then again, I’ve seen people (mostly men) misunderstand and whine about the idea of Schrodinger’s Rapist, how women remain on their guard and aren’t quick to trust people because rapists look and act like anyone else (even like trustworthy people) up until the time they choose to rape. And I’m not even going to get into the way that children and teens are targeted largely by people they know and often trust.

There is no way to avoid rape, or any other crime, 100% of the time; even if you live in a fortified bunker, there’s always someone who might try to get into the bunker (and heck, statistically speaking, most rapists know the victim or are close to the victim in some way, not psycho strangers lurking in shrubbery). There are no 100% foolproof precautions against any crime, unfortunately.

Telling victims it’s entirely their responsibility – and hence their fault – that they couldn’t avoid getting raped is not only false, it’s also another toxic idea that protects rapists by keeping victims silenced and shamed.

Projection of your own groupthink mentality. YOU may be easily influenced by your culture, but that is NOT an ideal and it is COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL to free thought! So much for “free thought” blogs!

I mean, think of the irony! Here we have “free thought” blogs explicitly advocating societal indoctrination of men, and discouraging them from making their own minds!

I’ve heard of Schroedinger’s rapist and it is completely irrational and unscientific. “Taking precautions” does NOT mean discriminating against non-rapists.

“Telling victims it’s entirely their responsibility – and hence their fault – that they couldn’t avoid getting raped is not only false, it’s also another toxic idea that protects rapists by keeping victims silenced and shamed.”

You obviously have immense disrespect for women. Do you REALLY believe they cannot look after themselves? There is NO BARRIER TO THEM SPEAKING OUT if they get raped. On their own head be it if they don’t.

“Projection of your own groupthink mentality. YOU may be easily influenced by your culture, but that is NOT an ideal and it is COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL to free thought! So much for “free thought” blogs!”

Ok, you’ve made me laugh. To some extent, we’re all influenced by the culture we grow up in from a very young age. Even freethinkers who break from cultural norms. You don’t become a complete blank slate. And even if you’re a freethinker, my friend, many people (including many rapists) aren’t; given that rape and consent are defined differently across cultures, surrounding cultural narratives about rape affect rates of rape and what constitutes rape. If a culture doesn’t teach young people about consent plus shames and blames rape victims, it’s a real boon for rapists.

And by the way, were I to be easily influenced by my culture, I’d totally think that some people (like promiscuous women and gay men) deserve to be raped and even killed. Plus, I’d think that various people are going to hell because they don’t believe in the right deity.

“Do you REALLY believe they cannot look after themselves? There is NO BARRIER TO THEM SPEAKING OUT if they get raped.”

Women look out for themselves every day. As for there being no barrier to speaking out, this comment shows you’re clueless about this topic. You have no clue about what it’s like for instance to deal with the police after such a crime, for one thing; you have no clue about the legal barriers we still have in our justice system. Or that people who are raped get death threats, threats of further rape, face job loss, face ostracism from their communities, etc.

Because after all we’re all free-floating free-thinking entities and culture doesn’t matter, right?

““Taking precautions” does NOT mean discriminating against non-rapists.”

Another fine joke from you. Not immediately trusting most men doesn’t mean you’re discriminating against them; it means you’re not always sure who’s a rapist since the vast majority of rapists look and act like ordinary guys – are in fact ordinary guys, including nice-looking guys who nicely ask you on a date. You can’t protect yourself to a great extent from rape without wondering if the guy who’s been nice to you the past couple of dates and is now offering you a ride home is trustworthy – because rapes happen like that too. Rapists don’t helpfully wear signs on them saying ‘I will rape you’ or let out other obvious signals in advance. Same goes for people who sexually abuse kids – they come from all walks of life, have families, have jobs. It’s a sad reality.

You can call yourself a freethinker all you want, and construct strawmen about how we’re supposedly disrespecting women, but essentially you’re so off base and so unacquainted with facts about rape that it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

“but that is NOT an ideal and it is COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL to free thought! So much for “free thought” blogs!”

One further thing, out of curiosity. Being influenced by one’s culture may indeed not be ideal, but the reality is that – to varying extents – people are, given that they’re surrounded by it and its narratives from a young age (and this includes people who rape!). Some people more easily question and discard those narratives then others; others accept them hook, line, and sinker. So given that we have a situation that you consider ‘not ideal,’ how would you encourage more free thought rather than blind acceptance of predominant cultural narratives?

“Not immediately trusting most men doesn’t mean you’re discriminating against them; it means you’re not always sure who’s a rapist since the vast majority of rapists look and act like ordinary guys – are in fact ordinary guys, including nice-looking guys who nicely ask you on a date.”

I just want to add something further to this important point – why rape (or any other crime) won’t ever be 100% preventable on the part of the victim – is that while most people aren’t rapists, some of the ones who initially appear trustworthy and that earn trust do commit rape.

It’s the same, unfortunately, for any crime – from theft to murder. You do your best, you try not to entrust your money or life to the ‘wrong people,’ but there’s no such thing as 100% prevention because there isn’t a foolproof way of always knowing who the ‘wrong people’ are. You may still wind up getting robbed, raped, beaten, or murdered. That risk is the price for living an ordinary life.

You should check out the field of psychology (especially social psychology) – we’re all susceptible to biases and cultural conditioning and negative stereotypes, even when we consciously disbelieve what we’re being told. Regrettably our brains are not perfect reasoning machines. I’m sure you’ve done better than most to avoid cultural brainwashing, but none of us are totally immune.

And many murderers were brought up going to church and hearing “thou shalt not kill” throughout their lives. The prisons are filled with such people!

How is it that this, the entire basis for your “teach boys not to rape and all will be well” advice, seems completely immune from scrutiny and skepticism on FREE THOUGHT BLOGS??? It is so factually inaccurate that I am still not sure if you were even able to type those words with a straight face!

There are discussions of this elsewhere, but I don’t think anyone suggests that rape will magically disappear, just like other crimes won’t 100% disappear in spite of laws and cultural changes.

I don’t think women or girls (or young boys or young men) will have to completely stop taking precautions, and no one’s about to stop either.

What people are discussing is reducing the rate of rape by also changing cultural narratives about rape and consent. When you have a culture where there are serious legal barriers to prosecuting a crime, plus young people who aren’t educated about consent (beyond some scenarios involving ‘stranger rape,’ which statistically speaking isn’t the most common scenario in the US), plus there are narratives shaming victims over rapists, there will be more rape. There are many people who still don’t understand basic things about non-consensual sex beyond the obvious ‘stranger with a knife jumps out of bushes and forces rape.’ They don’t always understand non-consensual sex, for instance, in an intimate relationship, or why that’s wrong. There are, for instance, people who think it’s ok, or at least not so bad, for non-consensual sex to occur in a marriage (particularly husbands on wives), since sex is a spousal right.

To give you an example with one kind of murder, the US years ago had narratives that permitted lynchings. Since the Civil Rights era we haven’t really seen lynchings. It’s not because people just came over and wagged their fingers at young Southerners and said, “don’t lynch.” It’s because the legal system changed, plus the cultural narratives surrounding lynching and black people more generally that made it less acceptable. However, these days we unfortunately still have cultural attitudes making some murders more acceptable than others, and some murder victims more expendable than others… which is a continuing problem. But rates of murder, rape, and other crimes do differ from one culture to another – it’s no accident that they do so.

Also, a crime will flourish because for every person who commits the crime there are at least a dozen other people who stand around doing nothing. When a gangrape is caught on tape, inevitably you see a handful of rapists, and then a bunch of people surrounding them who don’t commit rape but who cheer them on instead of intervening to stop it. They may feel that, under some circumstances, a rape is OK to cheer on, if it’s for instance a ‘slut’ who ‘deserves it.’ That’s what I mean by cultural narratives.

It’s not an all-or-nothing argument. Crimes will never magically disappear 100%. But our cultural narratives surrounding a crime, plus the way they’re prosecuted, do matter. ‘Teaching not to rape’ isn’t a simplistic thing where you just say that to someone and magically they won’t rape – that’s just a strawman argument. Just like ‘thou shalt not kill’ has no effect when it’s some words that never sink in or are regularly contradicted by how people act in the surrounding culture, or there are handy ways of excusing certain kinds of killing or getting away with them.

“We teach people not to murder, not to rob. It works.”
How is it that not a single commenter has called this statement to the carpet? How is that no one has bothered to point out that this statement is *exactly wrong*???
I never once told my daughter “You shouldn’t murder”. Yet she’s never murdered anyone.

The point is that we live in a culture were things like murder and theft are clear. Everyone knows that they are wrong, in that sense we teach people (it doesn’t require you personally telling anyone). But there are other things that are less clear. Like e.g. internet piracy. Or indeed rape. A lot of people aren’t aware that non consensual sex is even a problem. Which is why awareness campaigns make sense and seem to actually work.

Let’s do away with framing our arguments with ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking. Or extreme black-and-white thinking, such as the following: you must either believe that rape is 100% preventable, or you believe that prevention is 100% useless.

We can talk about reducing a crime rate, without framing our arguments with extremes about how the crime rate can either be 0 or very high, with no middle ground.

Also, introducing mutual exclusivity where there is none. For instance, the idea that you can’t combine personal precautions with advocating for effective broader cultural changes; that it has to be one or the other.

Modern feminists are ignorant extremist assholes. Anyone who doesn’t understand exactly what he’s saying is either stupid, has no critical thinking capacity, or has an agenda to push. Rapists are pitiful human beings and deserve much worse than jail time, but that doesn’t change the fact that the modern feminist approach at rape prevention is to tell women to be as reckless as humanly possible, and that it’s okay. That’s like teaching your kid to play in the middle of a busy street instead of being cautious around one. I give zero fucks what feminists say or how they make it okay, it’s extremist and stupid and obviously not very logical. Then when someone points that out, you’re going to bring all his arguments to extremes? (teaching someone not to drive to prevent wrecks? not quite. more like teaching someone to drive SAFELY to prevent wrecks. and as far as muslim men? Telling a woman to cover everything but her eyes, and telling a woman to choose her outfit carefully and be safe in crowds are two completely different things, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fucking moron).

FUCK FEMINISTS. I cannot fucking wait until your particular brand of extremist bullshit dies out so I can laugh about it. You know it’s bad when every WOMAN I know with even a modicum of intelligence and education refuses to associate with this “extremist cult” (that was verbatim by the way.).

Here’s a question, should we be telling people ‘avoid bullets and violent criminals?’ or should we agree that if there are shootouts in the streets, civilization has broken down? People should not have to take precautions against certain things, and *the study I linked to in another post* demonstrated that a campaign telling men not to rape DID have an impact. Or do you hate empirical evidence and prefer to work from assumptions?

Intelligence and education. You know, I know quite a we accomplished women who are feminists, including myself (I’m a software developer.)

I see no reason why going out in public, drinking at a pub, or talking to men is *playing in a dangerous street* unless you believe men are incapable of being anything but savages.

And on the ‘choose your outfit carefully’ bullshit, go shove it. I don’t wear make-up, never wear short sleeves and I never wear anything that doesn’t hit the floor, and I still get harassed in public. Men who harass or rape women don’t care what you’re wearing, it isn’t like rape goes away when everyone is bundled up in the winter.

And how would you know, you snotty bratty little internet troll? It’s your word against mine, and you aren’t exactly building a fan club. It’s assholes like you who are just interested in denying REALITY AND FACTS when it doesn’t support your misogyny.

Feminists have cried wolf so many times about being “harassed” by things that were not in any way harassing that I can safely assert that “I still get harassed in public” if false 99 times out of 100. OK, go on — how do you get harassed in public?

Well, David, those horrible straw-feminists will cease to exist as soon as you admit they’re not real. Then you’ll be able to laugh at them all you want without having to be afraid. As you get bigger, you’ll learn how to tell reality apart from dreams, and those monsters under your bed won’t bother you anymore.

“We teach people not to murder, not to rob. It works. It reduces murder and robbery rates.”

Can you idiot give me link to your source? Of course you can’t, because the rates don’t go down teaching people not to do something, rates go down by educating people.

The biggest factor that increases homicide and property related crime rates is POVERTY. When you EDUCATE people their PROSPERITY grows and they tend to do less homicides and crimes against property (remind you typical homicide is a pusher killing another thus money related).

RAPE is not a crime of gaining money but a crime of gaining power over the other human being. You can teach men all you like not to rape, rapist (with high probability) will still rape. Maybe this is the thing that you modern ‘feminists’ try to widen your definition of rape consist of any situation where a female says she was raped it’s a rape, no evidence required, you can even change your mind the morning after if the sex was bad, it’s still a rape.

We can teach people that it is not OK to want to have power over others.

On people not doing things that they are told not to, refer to my ‘no smoking’ example in a previous post. Defying a ‘no smoking’ sign is no longer cool and rebellious because the attitude towards smoking has changed.

The ‘definition’ of rape is that anything short of a YES is a no. I understand that many people like to argue that behaving a certain way *implies* consent, but nothing short of a yes does.

I don’t understand the hatred against TF? What’s wrong about telling women to do those things within their power such as locking your doors and windows to help avoid getting raped.
If a woman avoids taking a short cut through a dark alley, she does so because it’s the safe thing to do. How is it then, that if a man suggests she does not walk through the dark alley, it makes him a rape apologist?!?!

Phil Mason is suggesting women can avoid being raped if they behave a certain way, but the behaviour he is suggesting would do nothing to prevent the majority of rapes. He is deflecting attention from the real issues women face about their personal safety, such as that most rapes are committed by someone that the victim knows – acquaintance, friend, partner, family member – and in a place where the victim would usually feel safe – at home, at the home of the rapist, at work.

It also gives out the message that if a woman fails to follow these instructions – which are neither comprehensive nor clear – then she is in some way responsible for what happens to her. This discourages reporting of rape and it decreases the likelihood of conviction, thereby giving encouragement to rapists that, under certain circumstances, what they are doing is not that wrong, because society implicitly approves of it, and/or they will get away with it.

‘People keep thinking that when feminists say “teach men not to rape” we mean sitting boys or young men down and being like, “Listen son, rape is very very bad and you should NEVER do it. Okay? Run along now.”

And then they’re all like WELL CRIMINALS GONNA CRIME SO WHAT’S THAT GONNA DO HUH STUPID FEMINISTS

Well, the thing is, nobody ever claimed that that’s what we should be doing, so maybe you should actually do your research before arguing.

Some rapists are going to rape no matter what, but those aren’t really the ones we’re talking about. Other rapists rape because they don’t know that it’s rape. What if we taught them that? Others rape because they know they’ll get away with it. What if we actually enforced our laws so that they wouldn’t? Others rape because they feel entitled to a woman’s body. What if we restructured our society so that women aren’t treated like property?

Yeah, I guess that’s harder than terrifying women into not going out alone at night, but it’s a hell of a lot more effective!’

You think men feel secure at night?
There is not a night walk I ever had were I was afraid I got mugged or killed by some sociopath.
So I take the precaution of not listening to music while making that walk and always check up a head to avoid any possible confrontation with strangers. The night is a good cover for criminals to make a mark.

‘”People keep thinking that when feminists say “teach men not to rape” we mean sitting boys or young men down and being like, “Listen son, rape is very very bad and you should NEVER do it. Okay? Run along now.””
With this you are implying that women can never be rapists or that women are allowed to rape a man.A man was raped by a woman last month.

“Some rapists are going to rape no matter what, but those aren’t really the ones we’re talking about. Other rapists rape because they don’t know that it’s rape. What if we taught them that? Others rape because they know they’ll get away with it. ”
On this I agree. Some people will commit crime because they don’t see the scale of it with consequences in mind and those should be educated.
However as you say, some rapists will rape no matter what and we(TF included) say that for that reason we should at least teach children(or teenagers if you believe the age spectrum is not fit) how to minimize the chances of being raped as opposite to the “Don’t tell me how to ” argument.
It is better to arm them with some preventive matters than just crossing our fingers that just telling society to stop rape will illuminate rape to it’s fullest.
I completely agree that ant-rape campaigns should be implemented where they do not exist or where it is necesarry, but I stay behind the point that we should equally teach them the precaution on how to avoid looking like an easy target for rapists that are not willing to fall in line with that campaign.

Same actually goes for after rape, many cases are not reported in or people don’t know what to do in such a situation. We should educate them the best measures for if someone or themselves just got raped.
I remember an awareness day on school were everyone(as male victims can exist too) was advised not to take a shower if they got raped, as you could wash away the evidence that could be used against the rapist.
If you believe you got drugged, go to a hospital for a urine sample.
All this can severely extend the sentence of the rapist.

“What if we actually enforced our laws so that they wouldn’t? Others rape because they feel entitled to a woman’s body.”
And then you come with this.
I am sorry but how is the law not effective enough yet? And how about an example of how to chance it as opposite to just asking such a question because it is clear that the statement is that the current laws have no effect.

“What if we restructured our society so that women aren’t treated like property?”
Wait our society treats women like property?
Pretty sure I am not allowed to put my girlfriend on Ebay or trade her for someone else’s girlfriend.
Not to mention that she lives with me because she chooses to, not because I force her.
We are together because we love each other, not because she is my property.

This does not however means ever society is this equal. Equality is definitely a thing we must standardize in areas like Arabic countries where women are clearly hardly suppressed and rape is even of a much bigger issue as here since they are actually killed for being raped. There women are treated like property but here, no not really.

However if you believe that we should restructure society, than starting with equal nurturing (no gender stress like dolls vs action figures) would be a nice start:
Equally raising children until they are old enough to choose how they want to be.
No child beauty pageants or insisting young boys they should grow big muscles because they are males.

“Listen son, rape is very very bad and you should NEVER do it. Okay? Run along now.”
“Others rape because they feel entitled to a woman’s body.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s harder than terrifying women into not going out alone at night, but it’s a hell of a lot more effective!’”
“Taslima is implying no such thing.”
Please go on about why the son is only addressed instead of just saying “Listen kids” and how that is not implying girls can’t grow up to be rapists or how rapists only desire a woman’s body as opposite to the body of the gender they are attracted to?

“Yeah, I guess that’s harder than terrifying women into not going out alone at night, but it’s a hell of a lot more effective!’”
“”There is not a night walk I ever had were I was afraid I got mugged or killed by some sociopath.”

Boy, you’re not even coherent.”
Coherent: logical and consistent.
-Oxford dictionary English

But please go on how I address men can be scared too but Talisma implies only women have to fear going out at night alone and how we should treat the cover of the night as a clear day with lots of witnesses.

I watched the whole video and I think Taslima is blowing this out of proportion.

My parents always tell me to let them know when I’m coming home late so that they can walk me home from the bus stop. My boyfriend says he would prefer to drop me home if I need to take the train late at night. This does not make them misogynists or rape apologists. I don’t see what the problem is with taking precautions? I would advise any woman I care for in the same manner.

Thunderf00t said at the end of his video that just because he would lock his door/window at night, that does not mean he would close it up with bricks to protect himself. Because that would prevent him from the basic freedom one deserves to look out of their window and enjoy the view outside. Similarly, women should not be made to stay at home all day and wear burqas to cover from head to toe as this denies them the most basic level of freedom. But at the same time – every human being should be careful against predators of any kind and irresponsible people should learn to take responsibility for themselves, at least. This does not make rape or unwanted sexual advances right, nobody is saying that, so calm down.

Not walking in dodgy and dark places at night, or not getting drunk off your face in a room full of strangers while wearing the smallest skirt you could find on a rack is not going to deprive you of your life. Stop being so extreme and stop hurling insults at the slightest words of advice you hear from someone in fear of losing your freedom.

SHA, on the ‘dodgy and dark’ places, that’s the whole ‘rapist running out of the bushes’ nonsense. Most rapes aren’t like that, and even if they were, you can’t necessarily avoid places like that, particularly if you LIVE near them.

You tell *your parents* when you are coming home late? I’m guessing your pretty young, so you may be unaware that as far as night goes, people work at night, and can’t always plan for an escort.

On drinking, I know quite a few women who were sober raped by men who were drunk. I also don’t think there’s any evidence that clothes *are* a factor, men rape women wearing burkhas. All the advice you give is pretty much useless because it’s based on *assumptions* about rape (like that revealing clothes are correlated with greater chance of being raped) that so far, there’s no empirical evidence for. Do you have any evidence that clothes are a factor in rape? Or are you just repeating what other people said?

You’re right, I should have cleared up what I meant. I don’t believe that doing those things (drinking, travelling at night etc) are sole causes for rape or even a major causes for rape. They probably aren’t even a factor, or may add to risk only very slightly. All I’m trying to say is, if someone cared for you, then they may give you similar advice, but I wouldn’t read into it as being misogynistic.

Ofcourse I believe that the proper way to deal with rape is to not blame victims at all. In an ideal world I’d want the police to do something about every single rape case and for society as a whole to become more educated – but for as long as that ideal world is non-existent, people will ask girls to look out for yourself whether or not it’s useless to do so. There’s no harm in that.

Again, the sober women were being raped by someone drunk – that still is not responsible drinking, this time the person at fault is the man. There are responsible and irresponsible levels for certain kinds of behaviours and I don’t think reminding someone that is a crime.

I expect atheists to have good qualities because they I believe are the most intelligent and sane people on earth. I expect them to be nice, kind and honest. I expect them to believe in equality and justice. But when I see some of the atheists are misogynists, rapists, rape apologists, animal haters, murderers, war mongers, hypocrites, liars, exploiters, I feel sad. I really really feel very sad.

It’s a bit depressing, but a slight refinement to your model might help. Check out Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”. He talks about two social psychology measures: RWA and SDO, which can be thought of as “follower” and “leader” authoritarians. The two correlate to one another only weakly. RWA corresponds strongly to religiosity, is associated with prejudice against groups considered as dangerous, and correlates to a bunch of forms of stupid and crazy; SDO is associated with prejudice against groups that are derogated, and correlates to some other forms of crazy… and has virtually no correlation to religiosity.

Which lack of correlation means an irreligious person picked out of a barrel full of the irreligious is just as likely to be the sort of high-SDO personality who shares the commonplace derogatory attitude as if you were drawing a religious person from a religious barrel. It also seems subjectively more likely that a low-RWA high-SDO personality would be more likely to be the sort of person willing to publicly express dissent about how their beliefs deviate from the median for their culture.

The good news of this model is that SDO appears to be largely environmental — an attitude that can be learned, and can be unlearned. The bad news seems that the attitude can be learned relatively easily.

This is an odd statement. You don’t teach men not to rape. There is no skill involved in not raping that anyone has to learn. A person chooses to rape or not. The most that you can do is make young men understand what behavior constitutes rape and sexual assault. Men who willfully rape do so based on some level of psychopathy and there is no level of teaching that will alter their behavior. That is why we lock them up.

Also, all women are potential rape victims whereas a miniscule number of men have any propensity to rape. So one would end up lecturing to a large number of men who will never rape and ignoring providing information on how to be safe to masses of women; all of whom are potential rape victims. That is a silly thing to do just to make a feminist argument.

No one is saying that we should not make effort to instill in all men an attitude of non-rape/non-sexual assault, but to treat any and every effort to teach women how to be safe as “rape apology” is just another case of feminists looking for something to complain about.

You are way too literal on the ‘teach’ thing, as if the word ‘teach’ can only apply to skills. Language is not that rigid and inflexible; people can be ‘taught’ racism by being exposed to the attitude that it is acceptable, men who rape, like pretty much all anti-social offenders, rely on rationalization they can pull out to justify what they do. Remove the rationalizations and you reduce some of the rapes. The belief that rapists are out of control sociopaths just isn’t always true.

The problem with ‘how to avoid rape’ advice is that it’s never anything new, so giving it is just tiresome and patronizing, as well as being full of advice that is often not relevant (I have yet to see any real evidence that clothes affect rape.)

SHA, on the ‘dodgy and dark’ places, that’s the whole ‘rapist running out of the bushes’ nonsense. Most rapes aren’t like that, and even if they were, you can’t necessarily avoid places like that, particularly if you LIVE near them.

A major portion or rapes reported to the police are stranger rapes. What you are including are acts determined to be rape by a major study as opposed to police reports. This is the study whereas most of the alleged sexual assault victims did not consider themselves as having been sexually assaulted and nearly half had sex with their” assaulters” at a later period.

Are you suggesting now that rape cannot occur within marriage let’s say? Or that we have to *only believe* that something is a rape if it leads to a conviction? Do we apply that same standard to say, drug use? should assume that statistics on how many people do drugs based on self-reporting should be thrown out and I should say ‘well, we have go by convictions.’

Or are you suggesting that rape that isn’t the stranger leaping out of the bushes isn’t rape? Is ‘rape’ now defined to exclude rape by someone you know?

And ‘the study’- there are lots of studies that indicate that women are more likely to be raped by someone they know than strangers. “The study” – there are many studies on this.

There’s also the issue that our culture argues that women *imply that they want to have sex with someone* by their actions, attire, and all sorts of other things that aren’t really giving consent. Women are hit with the same cultural messages regarding consent that men are, so many women who are raped feel that since they didn’t say physically fight the guy off after saying no that it’s *not rape.* It’s like a person who falls for a scam who might not realize that the law might be on their side -they assume that they were duped and that was that.

The point is that a larger percentage of women who believe that they were raped actually report it to the police. When counting situations where an outsider determines that a woman has been raped when that very women does NOT believe that she has been raped, we then get the largel percentage of “rapes” that are not reported.

It is rather presumptuous in my opinion to declare someone to have been raped even when they don’t consider themselves to have been raped. Women know when they have been raped even when they choose not to report it.

I expect atheists to have good qualities because they I believe are the most intelligent and sane people on earth. I expect them to be nice, kind and honest. I expect them to believe in equality and justice. But when I see some of the atheists are misogynists, rapists, rape apologists, animal haters, murderers, war mongers, hypocrites, liars, exploiters, I feel sad. I really really feel very sad.

I know, right? We’re the rational ones! The thoughtful ones! We’re the ones who oppose prejudice no matter where it’s coming from. Simply because prejudice is wrong, not because the ones carrying it out are our “enemies.”
At least, that’s what I thought. Then I realised I’d been deluding myself all along. I guess it’s better to be irrational in seeing everyone as better than they are than in seeing half of the world’s population as unworthy of equal protection under the law or even, in some increasingly depressing cases, equal consideration as human beings. Gah! When does the irrationality end? Why can’t it be enough that we’re skeptics? We should be immune to this stuff, surely? Where’s that fallacy vaccine?

People commonly use false standard of measurement and they seek success, power and wealth for themselves and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. When man can not discover the purpose of life then they start praising the magic of illusion, in that mean time difficulties arise.

Theist,Atheist,agnostic whatever hundreds of name are there. some believes in believing some believes in not believing. nothing actually matters until and unless we forget the our common needs as a human being in the healthy planet we are in.

As per the topic Taslima has posted, i would say that its not about one person but the complete attitude and approach of some KIND of people. and root cause is somewhere else where noone digs in.
being educated,skilled or smart also doesnt work in that thinking level when one grows up with certain kind of deep rooted conditioning of mind.

I lived in scandinavia for few years and found that rape and violence are much less in these countries which we call materialist than our so called religious country.Among those few cases,majority of done by outsider(refugees,or migrator).

if the covering body is a way of minimizing rape,then why the amount of rape happening is more in the countries where women are hiding most of their body part and much less in the countries where they arent covering whole body? –so,woman should cover her body to prevent rape,this logic itself is just a bullshit.
more you cover,more it goes mental and becomes sickness.

Girl and a boy must grow,educate together.they shouldnt be kept in distance from childhood.so in the college and afterwards.they should be well educate about their body,health and hygiene.their body should be their rights.when grown up,their friendships,relationships shouldnt be anybodies concerned. a person grown up this way,well educated about male,female body,lived it well can have a healthy approach .
religion,philosophy,politics whatever if comes on the way of this healthy approach towards life,they should be turn aside but shouldn’t compromise for healthy life of a people.

perhaps only then we can create society where men and women relate in friendship,love,joy respecting each others choices,desires…connecting in friendly way,disconnecting in friendly way with love and respect !

so,when i read about the rape,i think more than the rapist those religious,political,so called intellectuals are are guilty who creates huge distance between man and woman,who deprives them from their basic desire of pleasures. once these fundamentalists changes,all that unnatural disappears. Rape is one of the most unnatural,inhuman,disgusting thing that happens.

I watched the video but didn’t find anything objectionable. I think rape exists only with humans not with other animals. Maybe it’s due to the sexual cycle.

The precautions mentioned in the video are valid, which obviously minimize risk. I agree with Taslima that the mindset of men in most of the third world communities is to dominate the women not only in sex but also with many other aspects. We can change the mind set by teaching men on trust, respect and harmony, general education can also serve this purpose in general. There are millions of wives being raped by their husbands( which generally isn’t considered rape or otherwise doesn’t come out) every night.

Yes, it’s true that women can be raped even in veils, it’s mostly the attitude of men towards women. But, now I think it’s improving. If you take in figures, how many percentage of men are rapists or have that attitude, I think it’s very low.

There shouldn’t be any harm in applying precautionary measures to minimize the risks. I think teaching , education is the ultimate solution of this problem. The logic of until when you protect yourself, compromise with many things unlike male counterparts. Men and women make the humanity, it’s obvious that both men and women are responsible for making humanity better. But those men who realize the responsibility, they are already out from the possibility of being rapists.

I don’t think even the strictest laws can solve this problem.

In the short term, the precautionary measures help but in the longer term education for mutual respect and trust are the solutions.

Even the societies which don’t accept the healthy friendship of men and women, are more prone to having this problems. But the situation is improving and now the friendship is common between boys and girls beyond “girlfriend-boyfriend relations”.

Finally, I didn’t find this video to be condemned so badly and I agree with Taslima that it’s a shared responsibility of men and women which makes the complete humanity. Indeed a great debate !

“I wrote, ‘thunderf00t is a rape apologist’. That made thunder crazy. “

Wouldn’t it piss you off too?

Doesn’t the fact that he has such an adverse reaction to that characterization say something about his position on rape apology? Doesn’t the fact that he has spent copious amounts of time trying to counter that charge say something about his feelings on rape apology?

Yes, it does. To suggest otherwise is tribal and it’s no wonder he finds it insulting.

Put another way – would an actual rape apologist feel terribly insulted if you called him one?

No, he wouldn’t.

This “rape apologist” trope is nothing but a gratuitous, unjustified smear in an enduring “if you don’t agree with us on every point then you must stand for everything we despise” campaign. There should be no wonder that so many people have an adverse reaction to such a characterization.

If only the feminists on this network spent half the time countering tribalism as they did worrying about manufactured rape-apology, this would be a much better network of critical thought.

So if someone says blatantly racist shit, gets called a racist, but then gets pissed off and spends lots of hours and keystrokes insisting that he’s been defamed, that proves he’s not really racist, right?

This “rape apologist” trope is nothing but a gratuitous, unjustified smear…

This statement is FALSE. “Rape apologist” has a specific meaning, and many of the things Thunderfart consistently says fit that meaning — something that’s been explained and shown in detail numerous times.

Men CHOOSE to rape women. That is a choice that they have made like, for instance, I am going to vandalize an American Outlet store tonight. Guys-stop skirting the issue, blaming women for being raped, etc. YOU are the ones who are doing this and ruining women and girl’s lives. All so you can overpower a female and have your stupid “orgasm.” Try keeping it in your pants for once! But nooo, you just cannot do that, can you? Victim blaming is all too easy. The deeper issue is what I have brought up in my writing here: men need to stop raping women!!